Atomic Habits in Action: How a Simple To-Do App Improved My Daily Life

Are you looking for a way to improve your productivity and make positive changes in your life? If so, you might want to consider using a to-do app like the one I’ve been using for the past three months. I’d like to share my feedback on how it has affected my life, and how it might be able to help you too.

I’ve been working on a fairly straight forward to-do app on Android and iOS mobile and I’d like to share my experiences of using the app.

The app is available on,

Web: https://lazy-chef-58429.web.app 

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.martinogg.dailytodo&hl=en&gl=US 

iOS:  https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/daily-todo/id1559454238 

Firstly, I have to say that my experience with this to-do app has been very positive. The app is simple yet very effective, and I find myself looking forward to checking it each day to see what I can accomplish. In fact, it feels like there is a lot of correlation between the ideas explained in James Clear’s book “Atomic Habits”, particularly the concept that doing small, regular habits can have a huge, compound effect over time.

Using this app has turned each day into a game of seeing what I can do in the moment to improve myself. It provides me with the motivation to do the smaller tasks that I might usually put off, which has made a big difference in my life.

For instance, I’m not a big fan of going to the gym. It’s expensive, and I don’t enjoy my time there. However, I do realise the importance of keeping fit. With that in mind, I use the to-do app to set a series of smaller exercises throughout the day at home, like planking for 2 minutes, doing 20 press-ups, and various 2-minute stretches. Since each of these tasks is its own item to be checked off, I get a sense of reward and accomplishment from completing them.

Similarly, I’ve set tasks to eat a banana and an apple every day, even though I don’t particularly enjoy eating fruit. But the fact of ticking off these items on my to-do list is enough to motivate me to do it anyway.

This app has also been helpful for my FIRE lifestyle (Financially Independent, Retire Early), where my days could potentially have absolutely zero structure. It provides me with a way to make meaningful achievements throughout the day while still having total freedom and control over how I accomplish my tasks.

Another great thing about the app is that it helps me take care of infrequent tasks that are easily forgotten. For instance, I have a task to check the solar panel metre reading every three weeks, to ensure that the solar panel system is still functional and no problems have arisen. I also have a task to vacuum the house once every three days, and to check Epic Games for free games every four days. These reminders help me stay on top of things that I might otherwise forget.

Additionally, I’ve set tasks to limit my overdoing of certain activities. For example, I have a task to play video games for only one hour every day, to watch one TV show per day, and to watch one movie every three days. This helps me stay balanced and avoid spending too much time on these activities.

To further optimise my use of the app, I even used Chat GPT to analyse my tasks and provide recommendations for new ones. Some of the suggestions I received were to learn to play a musical instrument, keep in touch with friends, and explore more spiritual or subjective aspects of life rather than only focusing on objective ones.

One challenge I’ve faced, however, is finding time for deep work, which requires a lot of blocked time each day. While I’ve set daily tasks for writing a blog article, programming for two hours, and studying Japanese for two hours, I’ve found that I don’t frequently accomplish them. I still need to work on finding a way to make these tasks happen more frequently in my day-to-day life.

In summary, the daily tasks app has made a huge positive impact on my life. It has helped me create structure and discipline in my daily routine, which is particularly useful for someone like me who has a FIRE lifestyle with no fixed daily routine.

By breaking down larger tasks into smaller, achievable ones, the app has helped me to tackle projects that I might have otherwise put off or forgotten about. It has also been useful in limiting my time spent on activities that I enjoy but can easily become excessive, like playing video games or watching TV.

However, I am still working on finding a way to consistently incorporate the daily tasks that require longer blocks of time, like writing, programming, and language study, into my routine. 

Overall, the daily tasks app has been a great tool for improving my productivity and making meaningful progress towards my goals. If you are someone who struggles with staying organised or motivated, I highly recommend giving a daily tasks app a try. It may take some trial and error to find the right balance and set of tasks that work for you, but the benefits can be substantial.

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Star Wars Last Jedi was so bad it made me never want to go to the cinema again

A few points helped me come to that conclusion. The plot line was weak enough for me to not care at all about the outcome in the movie. It was all over the place. A lot of show but little substance. Lots of little stories put together that never seemed to go anywhere. And what’s worse is the first movie was awesome! An unhinged bad guy who could freeze laser blasts in the air. Kylo-Ren’s boss is an ominous giant, Ray meeting Luke at the end. What a cliff-hanger! 

But the second movie. The Terror of Kylo-Ren’s boss from the first movie turned out to be this tiny thing with a lame death, Luke Skywalker was a grumpy old man during the whole movie, who’s most important move was to vanish and die. All of the suspense from the first movie just wasted.

Usually when I go to the cinema I would always do my due diligence and read reviews and watch youtube reviews to make sure it was worth my time. All the reviews I read or watched said it was a great movie with the worst point saying that it ‘subverted expectations’ Now I know what that means.

That movie was terrible. Not only was it terrible by itself, but it was a Star Wars movie. How could they do that to a Star Wars movie! A beloved movie franchise. What would make it worse is the final movie had to somehow try to make up for it, making it bad as well.

One thing I will say is that after that movie, I watched the Han Solo movie (on the aeroplane) with exactly zero expectations. And I was actually happy with that movie. It made for a relatively simple adventure and kind-of back story for Han Solo. It wasn’t anything more than it needed to be, and I had fun watching it.

After that movie and the reviews before watching it, I simply can’t trust any new movie any more. It was a waste of my time and money, I felt much worse for watching it. It destroyed my confidence in movie reviews as well as I can no longer trust them to give me an accurate depiction of how a movie will be any more. Especially not blockbuster movies.

App Recommendation

Skyforce https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.idreams.SkyForceReloaded2016&hl=en_GB&gl=US

This Shootemup game has been one of the few mobile games I actually completed. It doesn’t hurt that I love Retro Shootemups in arcade and console (Truxton, Whip-Rush, Twin Cobra, Aleste all mainstays when I was younger) but this game makes it super accessible with touch controls that make sense for mobile. You just touch the screen where you want to go, if you release the screen then it slows down the game significantly. This allows you to navigate in real life when needed and get back in to the action immediately.

There are only 10 levels, however a huge amount of replayability. You start with a pea-shooter gun, not even capable of clearing the first level. But over time you can collect currency in the game for shooting down enemies, then use that to upgrade your ship. Each new level requires a certain number of Level stars, achieved for completing different accomplishments in each level. I.e. Shooting down 100% enemies, never being hit, rescuing all people. Later levels require replaying earlier levels at harder difficulty levels to earn enough stars to progress. There is a little sense of grinding as to attain the level stars but you have to concentrate hard to have a perfect run through to get a new star, it doesn’t get boring. Especially for a Free game, there are no pay-walls. There is IAP to quicken upgrade times and for more lives, but you get 10 lives per day. Towards the end, the upgrade times end up taking 6 hours, so sometimes you just have to know when to stop for a while.

Interesting to note that the same game was released on PS4 (as a ‘free’ PSN’ title one month) but it didn’t take nearly as much grinding and no waiting times for upgrades. Even after finishing it on Android I played the whole game through again on PS4. A great game. There is even a sequel on Android as well.

Youtube Channel Recommendation

Go With Less https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_OyYOATliIj9xEx6bv2Z9Q

This is an American husband and wife team who talk about their adventures with FIRE (Financially Independent / Retire Early) They stopped working a little over a year ago and made preparations to travel and live without a job, giving regular updates about their plans and actions. For example, they packed up and sold their house, planning to live in house-minding places in order to have a place to stay and also earn a little accommodation at the same time. Unfortunately because of the Pandemic their plans had to change. However, I found it interesting to find other people who live by the ethics of FIRE and see how their adventure has turned out so far. One thing I can certainly say is that there are no two stories the same, so its interesting to see how they get on. At one point, they were actually talking about taking a holiday to Edinburgh. That would have been great because I’d have been just within an hour’s drive for a meetup

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